A 40-YEAR-old Limassol woman and her two young children were recently forced to leave home after police ignored a restraining order against her paedophile husband.
The authorities’ failure to implement the court order banning the woman’s husband from their former home effectively allowed the man who was jailed for raping his underage stepdaughter back into their home, reports said.
The incident concerns the paedophile released from jail in March following a court decision to reduce his sentence from 10 years’ imprisonment to five. The court decision, which referred to consent on behalf of the man’s stepdaughter, was extensively criticised in the press.
The 40-year-old mother of three’s plight came to light in yesterday’s Politis newspaper.
Following the Supreme Court decision to halve the 45-year-old man’s sentence, he was released after serving a total of three years behind bars.
His first stop, following his release, was his former home, where his wife and their two children still live. His stepdaughter, who is now an adult, lives abroad.
The 40-year-old said she came home from work to find her husband – who she has been trying to divorce since 2005 – on the couch with their two young children.
She said she was surprised because unlike previous visits he was not accompanied by a prison guard. At that point she had still not learned he had been released from prison.
The 45-year-old told her he had been moved to the open prison and had been given a weekend pass. She believed him because she was under the impression he had been sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, the paper said.
The following morning she and her children came out of the bedroom to find the 45-year-old on the couch where they’d left him.
“He was acting as if nothing was wrong. Later he invited friends round to our house,” she said.
On Monday morning, the 45-year-old had yet to return to jail, whereupon he confessed he had been released and informed her of the Supreme Court decision.
“I felt the ground fall out under me,” she told Politis.
Unable to believe the decision, she contacted the court and her fears were confirmed.
“The simplest thing would be for some competent state service to have informed us about the decision. Not even this was done,” she said.
The 40-year-old said she asked her husband to leave the house, which he refused to do, forcing her and her two children to pack up and move to a friend’s house.
On April 15, a temporary court order was issued giving her the exclusive right to use her home. The decision was never implemented.
Instead, her husband started to threaten her, forcing her to file a complaint with police.
Less than a week after the restraining order was issued, her husband came by the house and broke one of the windows, frightening their children.
“My son who is nine, saw things a child that age shouldn’t see,” she said.
The police were called. When three officers arrived later they told her “they had instructions that if she did not leave the house she would be arrested”.
The 40-year-old said she never found out who issued such instructions and that despite her own restraining order, she and her children left the home once again.
“Who has more rights in this country? The victims of family violence or the abusers?” she said.
A month on and today the 40-year-old is expected to return home. The restraining order has since been reinstated, reports said.
Meanwhile the police chief has been informed in writing about the whole affair.
The 40-year-old woman said she plans to go back home and hopes that this time, if she has any more problems with her husband, she will have the authorities on her side.
